How to Identify and Evaluate Environmental Aspects and Impacts

[Randy]

I have met a couple of good ones as well (to help even out the scorecard).

In particular the witness auditor that has audited me a couple of times in a course I deliver is excellant and I feel perfectly comfortable with the process and results. Feedback is excellant and the findings are supported by good evidence. This particular auditor would be an asset to any organization.

 

[Helmut Jilling]

I have met a couple of good ones as well (to help even out the scorecard).

In particular the witness auditor that has audited me a couple of times in a course I deliver is excellant and I feel perfectly comfortable with the process and results. Feedback is excellant and the findings are supported by good evidence. This particular auditor would be an asset to any organization.

The ones I've had were generally good as well. I just wish they would clean their own house first.

 

[tarheels4 - 2007]

You know, it is frustrating. In the last few weeks I have personally spent thousands of dollars getting training and testing so I can renew my TS credentials. It probably cost $5000 plus, if I factor in the lost audit days as well.

Each year, I spend several thousand to renew or retrain in one standard or another...just so some clod like that can witness me, and verify whether I am competent. Because they want to improve the integrity of the programs.

You would think they could do a better job policing themselves.

I think one way to look at it is that the relationship of the AB to the CB is like that of the CB to the organization audited. The auditor is the one one who is usually shi t on.

As you said earlier, during a AB witness audit the auditor may be "nitpicked" to death, the easy scapegoat (the CB is the customer of the AB); and on the the other hand (organization is the customer of the CB), the CB in most cases I bet, would support the customer rather than the auditor, if there was an appeal. The auditor is much easier to replace, and besides, the revenue comes from the organization (customer).

 

[QMarc]

Right ...!

Good morning covers,

interesting discussion to my last post here

Well, I agree with Randys standard opinion: Please choose the tools best fitting to your company ... right?! What we do for audits and auditors is something that fits to meet the standard requirements for 14K certification.

So it may happen that there will be discrepancies in between the two ways. In manners of a small and effective documentation this is wasting work and time.

My question to this problem is ... who is writing the standards and who ist setting the practical standards in daily work ... and there I find some discrepancies too.

@hjilling: You may be right with your opinion, but in our company all workers are well trained and the management employees are forced by the CEO to consider all aspects and impacts during their work. So for them a documented procedure or table or something else is nothing they have a look to. Even it is not a strategic tool for the management team.
Furthermore 20 % of the employees are loosing their job in the next months ... might be an argument for documentation, isn´t it?

QMarc

 

[Enviroken]

Back to what people were writing earlier about orgnisations not committing to ISO 14001 just getting the paper and thats it. Have any of you actually refused certidication due to witnessing this when peforming an audit? I recently asked an auditor from a large professional organisation this same question but he managed to talk for ages in response but not answer the question!

So much for top management commitment in those previous examples!!!

 

[QMarc]

What did you expect?

Did you expect something different? ;-)

QMarc

 

[Paul Simpson]

Yes

Have any of you actually refused certidication due to witnessing this when peforming an audit?

Yes. Without giving any details away - client confidentiality. I worked as a contract auditor for a certification body and audited this company. They had written their aspects list around what they thought they would do in the operational control area and had identified around 30% of the aspects that I could see with their processes. That - together with a few other glaring issues in environmental planning added up to a major.

 

[Helmut Jilling]

...in our company all workers are well trained and the management employees are forced by the CEO to consider all aspects and impacts during their work. So for them a documented procedure or table or something else is nothing they have a look to. Even it is not a strategic tool for the management team. QMarc

Perhaps, I am misunderstanding. But, if everyone considers all the Aspects and Impacts like the CEO requires, then it should only take 30-60 minutes to jot it down onto a table of some sort.

Perhaps, the greater likelihood is the American expression "out of sight ... out of mind." Meaning, if it is not documented in a form that can be reviewed and analyzed, there is a greater likelihood it is not analyzed as well.

There is another famous quote that says, "To improve it, you must measure it (and manage it)."

 

[Helmut Jilling]

Yes. Without giving any details away - client confidentiality. I worked as a contract auditor for a certification body and audited this company. They had written their aspects list around what they thought they would do in the operational control area and had identified around 30% of the aspects that I could see with their processes. That - together with a few other glaring issues in environmental planning added up to a major.

That sounds appropriate, particularly if there was evidence they did not put good effort or thought into it. (see, we're back in our usual role of agreeing with each other... )

 

[QMarc]

Perhaps, I am misunderstanding. But, if everyone considers all the Aspects and Impacts like the CEO requires, then it should only take 30-60 minutes to jot it down onto a table of some sort.

Yeah, you are right ... the table is not the problem. The auditor wanted us to use it as an strategic instrument and that´s not the way it is used.

It is still a document which mirrors the same important Aspects and Impacts considered in daily work, but that´s all.

Let me give you an example. Waste amounts are summarized and discussed for reduction more or less once a year. Everybody knows the aim to reduce the waste amounts.
So waste amount is an important topic for us, and why should we demonstrate it in another way by use of a table?

My aim to post it here, was to get an impression, if somebody has a mechanism to get more benefit of it ... can we?

QMarc